Tomasson gets it right.

San Francisco Ballet War Memorial Opera House San Francisco, California January 31-May 12, 2002

A ballet company's artistic director doesn't need to be a first-rate choreographer. But a finely tuned ability to balance vision with pragmatism is an absolute job requirement. Helgi Tomasson, who just finished his seventeenth year at the helm of San Francisco Ballet, has refined the juggling of these contrary impulses into a fine art. During this season he took few real risks, but his wide-ranging programs challenged dancers and audiences alike while allowing him to keep an eye on the bottom line.

Not that everything worked.

Julia Adam's second SFB commission, Angelo, got lost in a wilderness of props, metaphors, and motherhood. Jerome Robbins's Fanfare should be retired, maybe permanently. Roland Petit's conceptually intriguing L'Arlesienne and Lar Lubovitch's Othello will never be great despite the fact that the corps heroically coped with Petit's awkwardly monolithic footwork, and both Yuan Yuan Tan and Lucia Lacarra created Desdemonas with as much affect as possible under the circumstances.

But these relative missteps into overt theatricality were more than compensated for by outstanding company premieres. Balanchine's Jewels and Robbins's Dances at a Gathering, two masterpieces that couldn't be more different, joined the repertoire this season. Rumors about their inclusion had floated around for several years. But Tomasson is a patient man. He waited until he had not only the soloists but a corps that could lend its support to Jewels's soloists. This paid off in particular in the women corps in "Emeralds," whose softly rounded port de bras wove exquisite envelopes of affirmation around the pas de deux (Joanna Berman with Cyril Pierre and Julie Diana with Damian Smith). Tan, her exquisite lines never used more eloquently, moved through the dreamlike "Diamonds" pas de deux with an introspective grandeur from which not even the kiss from her ardent cavalier (Roman Rykine) could awaken her.

Dances may be the best example of how, in the right hands, classical and folk-derived traditions can inform each other for deeply satisfying results. It's an extraordinary piece that you can also have post-performance fun with, putting together your own ideal cast, which in this case would have to include Berman as both Pink and Green, Hansuke Yamamoto as Brick, Ruben Martin as Green, Yuri Possokhov as Purple, and most certainly Gonzalo Garcia as that all-essential man in Brown who, wandering into no-man's-land, fills it with mystery and life.

The season also offered four world premieres. Tomasson's episodic Chi-Lin (The Unicorn), set to a collaged score--most notable for the pas de deux's beautiful violin solo--by Chinese American composer Bright Sheng, was modestly choreographed, gorgeously danced, and lavishly produced. A tribute to Tan, who from fierce technician has blossomed into one of SFB's most nuanced dancers, Chi-Lin was inspired by the mythic animals that represent the elements. It featured, in addition to Tan as the unicorn (earth), Parrish Maynard as the phoenix (fire), Possokhov as the dragon (air), and Damian Smith as the tortoise (water). Chi-Lin, however, is not a major Tomasson piece.

Mark Morris created an introspective solo, Later, a set of variations for the retiring Joanna Berman, which looked rather trashy in the gala but, recostumed later in the season, proved a graceful tribute. No such birth pains afflicted Christopher Wheeldon's Continuum and Possokhov's Damned, also created for Berman. (I saw a stunningly impressive Lorena Feijoo.) They unhesitatingly communicated their imaginative power across the footlights.

Wheeldon's first SFB commission, the faintly Tudor-esque and Elgar-inspired Sea Pictures in 2000, was a musty affair, making one wonder why this British choreographer had such a sterling reputation. Continuum showed him to be a voice to be reckoned with. Like the NYCB Polyphonia (which will enter the SFB repertoire in the 2002-2003 season), Continuum is set to intriguingly colored Ligeti keyboard pieces. Designed for four couples (Diana/David Arce, Kristin Long/Garcia, Tan/Damian Smith, and Muriel Maffre/Benjamin Pierce), the piece opened and closed with the whole ensemble onstage. Framing a flippant women-only section, followed by a buddy dance for the men, were duets of exceptional wit and clarity that pushed the neoclassical vocabulary into a multileveled universe. Floor rolls, cartwheels, and bodies collapsing onto themselves were as much at home as broken lines and off-center balances, and the piece is full of never-ending surprises. At one moment Smith carried Tan across the floor, her legs straight ahead like a plank; then she regally rode his back and ended on his knees before melting into the ground.

Damned was a big step forward from Possokhov's cool and darkly witty but not terribly tight Magrittomania of two years ago. This work drew heavily on the expressionistic fervor that Bolshoi training inculcated into the choreographer. Set to two of Ravel's most famous scores, Pavane pour une infante defunte (at first in the orchestral, later in the piano version) and the Concerto in D Major for Piano (Left Hand) and Orchestra, Damned reworked the Medea myth in a strikingly original manner. Possokhov set the opening courting duet between a reserved Jason (Guennadi Nedviguine) and a beguilingly innocent Princess (Nicole Starbuck) against a windblown, fractured chorus, which he used much the way a Greek tragedy would. In their pushing, falling, and cradling movements the chorus members prefigured and commented on the action. The contrast between the lyrical courting duet and the sense of impending catastrophe was striking. In her iconic stances and dark brown shroud, Possokhov's Medea appeared Grahamesque, fiercely and desperately fighting a contemptuous Jason. The piece may have been designed for Berman, but with Feijoo it will be in good hands next season. The last image was that of Nedviguine, fallen to his knees, his arms hanging to his side. They looked like dead limbs.

For her last Giselle, Berman achieved the seemingly impossible. Even as an almost cosmic grief seemed to weigh her down, she danced with an incomparably airy weightlessness. It was a great exit.

This season may have brought Berman's retirement but it also saw new talents emerging, particularly from the ranks of the men. Garcia, with his clean and buoyant allegro and beguilingly sunny personality, was somebody you couldn't take your eyes off. Yamamoto is still too self-absorbed, but his technique is spectacular, and dancing his first Albrecht for SFB, Zachary Hench's ballon and entrechats prove him also to be a comer. But the most satisfying to watch probably was Diana, who proved that she has become a multifaceted, increasingly fascinating artist.